Don’t Even.

This makes me die a little inside not only as a librarian but as someone who’s done legit research and, you know, generally cares about the intellectual future of the world. ~_~

I wasn’t helping this particular student, my coworker had her, but still I cringed. This situation doesn’t happen a lot, but when it does. . .it’s like “Why didn’t you just come to the library and find some sources in the first place??” Trying to find references *after* the paper is written is asking for problems. What if nothing’s been written that agrees with what you’ve said? Yes, there’s millions and millions of articles in our databases and online, but sometimes you’d be surprised at what information is NOT out there. Many times I’ve gone to help a student find sources on X topic, something that sounds like it’ll be easy to find research on, and ended up wanting to throw things in frustration after twenty minutes of fruitless searching. (On the other hand, there have been times when someone’s topic made me O_O yet finding sources was ridiculously easy. . .you can never tell.)

But yeah. If you’re in college, please for the love of all things holy, DO NOT DO THIS. Get your sources before you even open a new Word document. . .at least then the tricky part will be over and your librarian will be much happier to help you if something weird *does* come up.

* * * *

I’m gonna actually write a story related post tomorrow (or whenever the next time I write is) since I’m forging ahead with Part II. I think I said before that I’d like to attend the Summer Writing Conference at URI this year, attempt to do some networking ::barf:: and whatnot so it would be great if I had a slightly larger chunk finished.

K, I’m at work. . .I should probably be doing library related stuff since last week was my time for slacking off. :p